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THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 


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LIBRARY 
OHIO  STATE 
UNIVERSITY 


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»  nf 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH 


AN  ESSAY  IN  "HIGHER  CRITICISM' 


BY 

BOCARDO    BRAMANTIP 

rr,/ti*,r  0/ Dimltdift  im  tki  Umi^trtity 


FROM    THE   THIRTY-SRVBNTII   CENTURY    MAGAZINE  OP 
APRIL,    A.    I).    3663 


NEW   YORK 
THE   MASCOT   PUBLISHING   CO, 


•  5. 

B8 


Reproduced  by 
DUOPAGE  PROCESS 

in  the 
U.S.  of  America 


Micro  Photo  Division 
Bell  &  Howell  Company 
Cleveland  12,  Ohio 


THE   MASCOT   PUBLISHING   CO. 


All  rig  kit 


THE    MKIKHOM    COMPANY    PKF.SS, 
»AMWAV,    N.    ). 


I 


This  anticipatory  criticism  is  republished  with  a  few  emen 
dations  (conforming,  however,  to  an  authentic  MS.  of  Bocardo 
Bramantip)  from  the  Catkolic  World  of  November  and 
December,  1893. 

It  is  apparent  that  the  variety  of  "  Higher  Criticism"  upon 
which  the  African  Critic  has  modeled  his  "Essay"  is  that 
practiced  by  controversialists  of  the  Agnostic  School. 


J:V 


THE 

ABRAHAM   LINCOLN  MYTH 


LAST  New  Year's  Day  the  Eigh 
teenth  Centennial  of  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation  of  Abraham  Lincoln  was 
celebrated  with  great  tclat.  Wherever 
African  civilization  has  extended, 
through  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe, 
the  children  of  Africa,  and  the  nations 
they  have  civilized,  celebrated  the  festi 
val  with  joy  and  enthusiasm.  Never  to 
be  forgotten  was  the  spectacle  on  the 
banks  of  the  Victoria-Nyanza,  at  the 
unveiling  of  the  statue  of  "  Lincoln  Sign- 


2  THE  ABRAHAM  UXCCW  MYTH. 

ing  the  Emancipation  Proclamation " — 
the  masterpiece  of  the  great  Natalian 
sculptor,  Durango. 

The  president  of  the  Universal  Con 
federation  of  Nations  presided  in  person 
over  the  ceremonies,  which  were  wit 
nessed  by  the  assembled  multitudes  of 
Africa's  sons,  and  pilgrims  of  every  race 
and  clime  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

It  could  not  but  impress  all  with  the 
thought  that  this  is,  in  truth,  an  era  of 
good  feeling  and  universal  brotherhood. 

Now,  I  have  no  disposition  to  cast  a 
shadow  on  the  general  rejoicing  by  the 
expression  of  any  disagreeable  skepti 
cism,  and  it  is  no*  altogether  a  pleas 
urable  undertaking  to  dispel  the  hap;»y 
delusion  under  which  m-y  countrymen  are 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  3 

laboring  in  honoring  an  event  which,  as 
I  maintain,  is  not  known  ever  to  have 
taken  place.  On  the  contrary,  in  a  cer 
tain  way,  I,  and  all  other  advanced 
thinkers,  who  look  upon  the  popular 
tradition  of  Abraham  Lincoln  and  his 
Emancipation  Proclamation  as  a  myth  of 
the  Dark  Ages,  may  consistently,  not 
withstanding  our  want  of  faith,  unite 
with  our  African  brethren  in  this  jubilee, 
precisely  as  the  agnostics  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  took  part  in  the  festivities 
of  Christmas.  All  we  ask  is  to  be 
allowed  to  accept  the  tradition  in  a 
rational  way  ;  that  is  to  say,  as  the  con 
crete  poetic  or  legendary  expression  of 
great  abstract  underlying  ideas — as,  for 
instance,  that  "  Truth  crushed  to  earth 


4  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

shall  rise  again " — and  the  inherent 
power  of  the  African  race  to  attract  to 
itself  as  to  a  magnet  the  moral  forces  of 
the  universe,  in  the  eternal  struggle  for 
the  enfranchisement  of  the  soul  and  the 
elevation  of  humanity. 

But  unfortunately  a  narrow  and 
fanatical  spirit  seems  to  have  taken 
possession  of  those  who  managed  this 
latest  Abraham  Lincoln  centennial. 
This  spirit  found  very  obnoxious 
expression  by  the  orator  of  the  day  at 
the  unveiling  of  the  Lincoln  statue, 
to  which  I  have  just  alluded.  He  was 
no  less  a  personage  than  the  principal 
of  the  Law  School  of  the  University 
of  Uganda. 

He    seized    the    opportunity    to  speak 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  5 

in  a  censorious,  not  to  say  contempt 
uous  tone,  of  those  who  do  not  accept 
the  popular  story  as  "  gospel  truth," 
even  going  so  far  as  to  charge  them 
with  juggling  with  history. 

I  feel  entirely  justified,  under  this 
provocation,  in  speaking  out  my  mind 
freely  on  this  matter. 

I  had  not  supposed  that  any  man 
who  had  a  reputation  'for  scholarship 
to  lose  would  venture,  at  this  day,  to 
avow  his  belief  in  the  Abraham  Lin 
coln  legend.  But  it  seems  I  am  mis 
taken.  For  the  distinguished  principal 
of  the  Uganda  Law  School  boldly 

avows  that  he   fully  and  firmly  believes 

• 

in  the  literal  truth  of  this  extra 
ordinary  story.  Far  be  it  from  me  to 


6  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

rebuke  his  temerity.  Indeed,  I  cannot 
forbear  to  express  my  profound  admira 
tion  for  the  courage  he  thus  displays 
in  facing  the  ridicule  of  the  advanced 
thinkers  of  this  thirty-seventh  century. 
Only  when  he  makes  the  astounding 
assertion  that  this  story  is  true  beyond 
all  reasonable  doubt,  and  has  been 
accepted  as  true  by  the  best  scholars 
of  every  age  since  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury,  and  proceeds  to  give  a  long  list  of 
historians  who,  as  he  asserts,  express 
this  belief,  I  feel  called  upon  to  warn 
the  African  public  that  they  ought  not 
to  listen  to  this  man. 

It  is  galling  to  our  pride  to  be  told 
that  our  brethren  in  America  were 
indebted  for  their  freedom  to  a  white 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.'  7 

man — one  of  the  degenerate  Caucasian 
race. 

But  what  is  to  be  expected  of  a 
lawyer  when  dealing  with  a  question 
of  evidence  ? 

One  might  as  soon  be  expected  to 
listen  patiently  to  a  theologian  ventu 
ring  to  enter  the  lists  of  controversy 
with  a  professional  scientist  upon  a 
question  of  biblical  history  or  criticism. 
He  is  to  be  distrusted  from  the  out 
set. 

We  all  know  how  vigorously  and 
how  effectively,  in  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury,  the  Aristotle  of  our  New  Dialec 
tics  warned  the  British  public  not  to 
pay  any  attention  to  .theologians  when 
disputing  questions  of  biblical  history 


8  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

and  criticism  with  a  professor  of 
biology. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  very  chair 
which  the  principal  of  the  Law  School 
fills  was  endowed  by  a  wealthy  and 
credulous  admirer  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
— Marino  Tobago — upon  the  express 
condition  that  every  year,  on  Emanci 
pation  Day,  its  occupant  should  deliver 
a  panegyric  on  the  great  American 
President  and  his  services  to  the  African 
race. 

Is  it  not  apparent,  then,  that  here  was 
a  direct  bribe  to  pervert  history  ?  For 
since  it  would  be  absurd  to  deliver  a 
panegyric  on  a  man  who  never  lived,  or 
to  extol  his  services  to  the  African  race 
if  he  never  rendered  any  service,  the 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  9 

learned  principal  could  not,  of  course,  be 
expected  to  investigate  the  questions  of 
Lincoln's  existence  and  services  with  an 
unbiased  mind,  at  the  risk  of  reaching 
conclusions  which  would  make  it  impos 
sible  for  him,  with  any  self-respect,  to 
retain  his  place. 

The  learned  principal  of  the  Law 
School  displays  too  much  feeling  for  an 
historical  critic.  He  manifests  in  his 
address  a  profound  veneration  for  the 
martyred  President.  He  evidently  be 
lieves  this  story  with  his  whole  soul. 

This  alone  disqualifies  him  from  exer 
cising  a  dispassionate  and  impartial  judg 
ment  upon  the  questions  at  issue. 

The  scientist  or  the  agnostic,  on  the 
other  hand,  never  has  any  fixed  belief, 


10  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

and  is  as  ready  to  change  his  views  for 
newer  theories,  as  he  is  to  change  his 
clothes  with  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  ther 
mometer. 

It  is  obvious,  then,  that  he  is  incom 
parably  better  fitted  to  get  at  the  truth 
of  any  historical  question  than  a  man 
who  is  handicapped  by  strong  convic 
tions.  But  let  this  pass. 

I  now  propose  to  examine  critically 
the  popular  tradition,  upon  the  accepted 
principles  of  agnostic  dialectics,  as  they 
have  been  transmitted  to  us  from  the 
great  masters  of  the  art  in  the  nine 
teenth  century. 

What  is  the  story  we  are  asked  to  be 
lieve?  Stripped  of  everything  that  is 
non-essential,  reduced  to  what  its  advo- 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  II 

cates  claim  is  the  assured  residuum  after 
all  controversy,  it  is,  briefly  stated,  as 
follows : 

About  the  year  1860,  on  the  eve  of 
the  great  Civil  War  in  America,  there 
suddenly  appeared  as  a  great  public 
leader  a  man  of  obscure  origin,  named 
Abraham  Lincoln. 

Although  previously  wholly  unknown 
to  the  great  mass  of  the  people,  he  was 
chosen  President  of  the  republic,  and 
as  the  principles  he  represented  were 
looked  upon  with  abhorrence  and  fear  by 
nearly  one-half  the  nation,  his  election 
precipitated  a  rebellion.  But  he  showed 
himself  from  the  very  outset  to  be  a  man 
of  destiny — the  greatest  of  statesmen 
and  the  wisest  of  rulers.  During  the 


12  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

course  of  the  war,  and,  as  it  is  commonly 
stated,  on  the  first  day  of  January,  1863, 
he  issued  a  Proclamation  emancipating 
the  slaves  everywhere  throughout  the 
territory  in  possession  of  the  rebels. 
This  WPS  practically  tantamount  to  uni 
versal  emancipation.  Thus  was  the  slav 
ery  of  the  African  race  in  America  abol 
ished.  He  suppressed  the  Rebellion  and 
saved  his  country. 

Elected  to  the  Presidency  a  second 
time,  shortly  after  his  inauguration, 
while  attending  the  theater  on  a  Good 
Friday  night,  he  was  assassinated  by  an 
actor  who,  after  committing  this  horri 
ble  crime,  leaped  upon  the  stage,  ex 
claiming,  "  Sic  semper  tyrannis  —  the 
South  is  avenged!"  But  although  the 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  13 

theater  was  crowded  with  people  warmly 
devoted  to  the  President,  his  murderer 
was  allowed  to  withdraw  unmolested. 
From  the  moment  of  his  assassination 
Abraham  Lincoln  was  looked  upon  as 
a  martyr,  and  by  the  African  people  in 
America  as  their  •"  Moses,"  who  had 
led  them  out  of  the  Egypt  of  their 
bondage.  Such  is  the  popular  tradi 
tion. 

Now,  I  frankly  admit,  at  the  outset, 
that  I  see  no  sufficient  reason  to  doubt 
that  such  a  man  as  Abraham  Lincoln 
lived  in  America  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  that  he  was  President  of 
the  United  States  during  the  Civil 
War. 

This  admission  ought  to  be  set  down 


14  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

by  my  readers  to  my  credit ;  proving, 
as  it  does,  my  extreme  fairness  and 
moderation.  At  the  same  time  I  guard 
myself  against  being  supposed  to  af 
firm  that  Abraham  Lincoln  did  ever 
actually  exist,  or  was  ever  actually 
President  of  the  United  States.  I  say 
this  much  by  way  of  forewarning,  as 
it  is  possible  the  exigencies  of  this  con 
troversy  may  require  me  to  withdraw 
the  admission  just  made ;  for  there  is, 
as  is  well  known,  a  brilliant  school  of 
historical  critics  who  more  or  less 
question  the  historical  reality  of  Abra 
ham  Lincoln,  and  the  genuineness  of 
all  the  alleged  contemporary  and  early 
accounts  of  his  times. 

But,  excepting  so  far  as  I  have   now 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  IS 

admitted,  I  maintain  that  the  popular 
story  of  Abraham  Lincoln  is  unhistoric 
— fit  only  to  be  relegated  to  the  cate 
gory  of  myths. 

There  is  no  good  reason  to  think 
that  he  was  ever  re-elected  to  the 
Presidency,  for  we  have  no  certain 
record  of  any  official  act  of  his  subse 
quent  to  the  close  of  his  term  of  four 
years.  He  seems  to  have  been  suc 
ceeded  immediately  at  the  close  of  such 
term  by  one  Andrew  Johnson. 

The  story  of  his  assassination  suggests, 
in  all  its  details,  the  hand  of  a  novelist 
or  a  playwright.  The  time  chosen  for 
the  tragedy,  a  Good  Friday  night ;  the 
place,  a  crowded  theater;  the  assassin, 
a  professional  actor  of  tragedy;  the 


1 6  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

murderer's  dramatic  leap  upon  the 
'stage,  brandishing  the  weapon  of  death 
and  exclaiming  in  dramatic  tones,  "  Sic 
semper  tyrannis  ! "  (which,  it  may  be 
remarked,  was  simply  the  legend  of 
the  State  of  Virginia) ;  the  vast  audi 
ence  paralyzed  with  amazement  or  fear 
—all  these  accessories  seem  like  skill 
fully  arranged  settings  for  the  tragic 
climax  of  a  romance  or  a  drama.  All 
I  here  claim,  however,  is  that  the  story 
looks  artificial  and  suspicious  on  its 
face. 

It  is  wholly  immaterial  that  the  story 
appears  to  have  been  generally  believed 
by  the  American  people  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  or  in  the 
following  three  or  four  centuries  ;  such 


. 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  17 

ancient  belief  does  not  even  tend  to 
prove  that  the  story  is  true — it  is  rather 
a  reason  for  doubting  it.  It  is  essen 
tial  for  the  higher  historical  criticism — 
the  sine  qua  non  of  its  possibility — that 
the  speculations  of  modern  critics 
should  not  be  handicapped  by  the 
beliefs  of  the  people,  or  by  the  views 
of  the  so-called  historians  of  early 
ages — before  the  dawn  of  Scientific 
Historical  Criticism.  For  whatever 
any  believer  in  this  myth  may  say  to 
the  contrary,  it  is  simply  a  fact  that 
history — I  mean  true  scientific  history — 
had  its  origin  with  the  African  Renais 
sance.  All  that  transpired  before  the 
overthrow  of  Aryan  power  in  Europe 
and  America,  and  the  final  triumph  of 


1 8  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

African  supremacy  in  both  hemispheres, 
belongs   to   the    Dark   Ages. 

I  know  the  Law  School  principal, 
like  most  others  of  his  cloth,  professes 
to  take  a  totally  different  view  of  this 
matter.  In  order  to  be  perfectly  fair, 
I  give  what  he  has  to  say  on  this  sub 
ject  in  his  address  in  his  own  words, 
as  follows : 

"  Conceding  that  posterity  is  better 
qualified  than  contemporaries  to  form 
a  just  estimate  of  the  character  of  pub 
lic  men  and  measures,  and  to  discover 
through  the  development  of  institu 
tions,  whether  civil  or  religious,  the 
nature  and  inherent  power  of  their 
germs,  yet  questions  as  to  the  existence 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  AfYT^f.  19 

of  alleged  historical  facts  are  a  wholly 
different  matter.  The  general  belief 
of  the  American  people  living,  say,  in 
the  year  1894,  and  subsequently  in  that 
century,  or  in  the  centuries  immedi 
ately  following,  in  the  popular  story  of 
Abraham  Lincoln's  life  and  death,  and 
in  the  fact  of  the  Emancipation  Procla 
mation,  and  that  such  narratives  as 
Horace  Greeley's  'American  Conflict' 
and  General  Grant's  '  Personal  Memoirs,' 
and  the  autobiographies  of  General 
Sherman  and  General  Sheridan  were 
authentic  and  credible,  ought  to  be 
received  as  settling  these  questions  for 
.  all  time. 

"  The  contemporaries  of   Lincoln,  or 

those   living   in    the    times    immediately 

• 


20  TfTE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

following,  were  vastly  better  qualified 
to  pass  upon  these  matters  than  scholars 
living  in  our  own  day;  and  while  in 
the  lapse  of  time  the  evidence  upon 
which  they  acted  must,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  have  become  to  a  great 
extent  lost  or  impaired,  its  import  is 
crystallized  and  preserved  for  all  time 
in  the  verdict  of  contemporaneous 
and  early  common  belief.  Upon  the 
same  principle,  in  the  interpretation 
of  ancient  documents,  the  wisdom  of 
centuries  finds  its  expression  in  the 
maxim  of  the  common  law — Contcmpo- 
ranea  ex  posit  to  est  optima  et  fortis 
simo,  in  lege. 

"These      questions     ought      to      be 
treated,    then,    as    res   jndicata.     It    is 


\ 

THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  21 

about  as  irrational  to  refuse  thus  to 
accept  the  verdict  of  Lincoln's  con 
temporaries,  and  of  those  who  lived  in 
early  times  succeeding  him,  and  to 
insist  on  rewriting  his  history  de  novo, 
after  the  lapse  of  eighteen  centuries,  as 
it  would  be  to  insist  on  settling  the 
question  of  the  source  of  the  Nile  by 
making  observations  at  its  mouth,  and 
refusing  to  credit  the  report  of  those 
who  had  looked  upon  its  head-waters. 
Nor  can  it  be  doubted  that  the  genera 
tions  immediately  succeeding  received 
and  retained  the  general  belief  of 
Lincoln's  contemporaries  on  those 
matters  in  its  essential  integrity,,  and 
transmitted  it  in  their1  turn  to  those 
who  came  after  them. 


22  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

"  It  is  inconceivable  that  in  the 
twentieth  or  succeeding  centuries  the 
original  tradition  should  have  become 
obliterated,  or  a  new  belief  imposed 
upon  mankind. 

"  Shakespeare  thus  illustrates  the 
persistency  and  integrity  of  even  oral 
tradition,  in  a  dialogue  between  the 
young  Prince  Edward  and  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham  on  their  way  to  the  tower 
of  London : 

"'Prince.     I  do  not    like  the  Tower, 

of  any  place. 
Did    Julius  Caesar  build  that    place,  my 

.  lord  ? 

"'Buckingham.     He  did,  my  gracious 
lord,  begin  that   place  ; 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN'  MYTH.  23 

Which,     since,     succeeding    ages    have 

re-edified. 
41  'Prince.     Is   it  upon  record,  or  else 

reported 
Successively    from  age  to  age,  he  built 

it? 
"  ^Buckingham.     Upon       record,     my 

gracious  lord. 
11  'Prince.     But   say,  my   lord,  it  were 

not   register'd, 
Methinks    the    truth    should    live    from 

age  to  age, 

As  'twere  retail'd  to  all  posterity, 
Even  to  the  general  all-ending  day/  * 

V 

"  If   this   be  true  of   purely   oral    tra 
dition,  and  true  as  to  a  matter  of  com- 

*  "  Richard  III.,"  act  iii.  scene  i. 


24  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

paratively  little  importance,  what  like 
lihood  is  there  that  the  contemporary 
record  of  events  of  such  vast  import  as 
those  we  are  now  considering  was  lost 
or  falsified  ? 

"  To  believe  this  to  have  occurred  is 
to  yield,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  to 
the  extreme  of  credulity  and  the  extreme 
of  skepticism.  But  these  extremes 
naturally  meet  together."  . 

Thus  far  the  learned  principal  of  the 
Law  School. 

Now,  I  submit  that  his  notions  are 
wholly  effete  and  untenable.  Had  they 
prevailed,  neither  the  Tubingen  school  in 
the  nineteenth  century,  nor  the  Timbuc- 
too  school  in  the  thirty-seventh,  with 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  25 

'  *  all   their   brilliant    and   varied   theories, 
would  have  ha'd   a   raison   d'ltre. 

It  would  have   followed,  for  instance, 

that    the    results     reached    by    Origen 

i 
in    the   third   century,    Eusebius   in    the 

fourth,  and  St.  Jerome  in  the  fifth,  all 
in  substantial  accord  in  settling  the 
authenticity  and  text  oi  the  New  Testa 
ment,  would  never  have  been  super 
seded  by  the  speculations  of  Strauss  or 
Baur  or  Renan. 

It  is  true  that  Origen,  Eusebius,  and 
St.  Jerome  were  men  of  profound 
scholarship  (I  mean,  of  course,  for  their 
age),  and  unquestionably  had  the  advan 
tage  of  vastly  more  material,  in  the  way 
of  early  manuscripts  (since  lost),  than 
the  critics  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


*6  THE  ABRAHAM  L1XCOLN  MYTH. 

But  the  latter  made  up  for  this  dis 
advantage  by  the  vast  increase  of  the 
"  historical  temper,"  upon  which  our 
agnostic  forefathers  of  the  nineteenth 
century  so  well  insisted. 

While  in  the  lapse  of  time  early  manu 
scripts  disappeared,  their  place  was  more 
than  supplied  by  the  '*  imaginative " 
element,  which,  as  a  great  authority, 
Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward  says,  is  essential 
for  the  higher  criticism.  In  her  "  New 
Reformation "  she  tersely  describes  the 
advanced  school  of  higher  criticism  as 

o 

"  half  scientific,  half  imaginative."* 

Of  these  two  elements  it  is  obvious 
the  "  imaginative "  is  by  far  the  most 
important,  and  has  chiefly  contributed 

*  Nineteenth  Century,  March,  1889,  p.  457. 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  2? 

to  the  brilliant  results  in  biblical  criti 
cism  to  which  this  school  has  mainly 
devoted  its  attention. 

I  insist  upon  the  opposite  of  my  oppo 
nent's  thesis,  and  maintain  that  critics  of 
the  thirty-seventh  century  are  better 
qualified  to  pass  upon  the  truth  of  the 
popular  story  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  and 
the  authenticity,  competency,  and  credi 
bility  of  such  narratives  as  Greeley's 
"American  Conflict"  and  Grant's  "Per 
sonal  Memoirs,"  than  were  those  living 
in  the  twentieth  or  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century. 

The  beliefs  of  the  first  century  were 
ignored  by  the  critics  of  the  nineteenth 
as  superstitious  and  incredible.  The 
scholarship  of  the  nineteenth  century 


28  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

seems  to  us  childish,  crude,  and  inade 
quate.  A  thousand  years  hence  the 
best  results  of  modern  criticism  will 
doubtless  be  looked1  upon  as  mere 
literary  curiosities,  void  of  intrinsic 
value.  And  thus  it  must  ever  go  on 
with  the  advance  of  thought  (or  of 
time)  to  the  end.  With  each  succeed 
ing  age  the  work  must  be  done  over 
again,  and  history  must  be  rewritten  or 
"  reconceived "  (as  Mrs.  Ward  puts  it), 
in  the  light  of  modern  ideas.  It 
follows  from  this  discussion  that  in 
dealing  with  the  Lincoln  legend  we 
should  start  with  a  tabula  rasa,  dis 
regarding  the  beliefs  and  the  so-called 
histories  of  early  times,  and  proceed 
to  reconstruct  or  "  reconceive "  the 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  29 

tradition,  so    as    to    conform    it    to    the 
advanced   views   of   modern    critics. 

The  story  is  the  outgrowth  of  "  hero 
worship,"  so  prevalent  in  the  nine 
teenth  century.  The  Aryan  race  was 
given  to  the  love  of  the  wonderful,  and 
to  the  idolatry  of  its  great  men.  We 
have  this  story  of  Lincoln,  just  as  we 
have  the  stories  of  Columbus,  of 
Washington,  of  Cromwell,  of  Charle 
magne,  of  King  Arthur,  of  Robin 
Hood,  of  Romulus  and  Remus,  of  the 
Cid,  of  Amadis  de  Gaul,  and  of  Don 
Quixote.  They  are  one  and  all  the 
outgrowth  of  this  love  of  the  wonder 
ful  and  of  this  "  hero  worship,"  and 
as  Huxley  said  of  miracles,  I  may 
with  equal  appositeness  say  of  these 


30  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

stories :  "If  one  is  false  all  may  be 
false."* 

The  age  lacked  "the  historical 
temper."  It  was  prone  to  believe 
every  marvelous  story  told  of  its 
heroes.  We  have  learned  to  expect 
such  stories  in  the  narratives  of  that 
time,  but  they  are  no  longer  accept 
able  to  the  dispassionate  criticism  of 
an  age  of  scientific  thought. 

As  was  said  by  Mrs.  Ward  (in  her 
"  New  Reformation " )  of  historians 
before  her  time,  we  may  now  say  of 
the  historians  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  :  "  They  represented  the  excep 
tional,  the  traditional,  the  miraculous, 

*"  Essays  Upon  Some  Controverted  Questions"  (1893), 
P-  374- 


THE  ABRAHAM  LtNCOLtf  MYTH.    .      31 

and  they  have  had  to  give  way  to 
the  school  representing  the  normal,  the 
historical,  the  rational."  * 

I  reject  this  story,  then,  because  it 
is  not  only  "  traditional,"  but  also 
because,  as  viewed  in  the  light  of  the 
present  day,  it  is  "  exceptional." 

Precisely  formulated,  the  postulate, 
or  first  principle,  upon  which  I '  reject 
this  tradition  as  a  myth  is  as  follows  : 
It  is  improbable  and  incredible  that 
such  a  career  as  that  which  the  tradi 
tion  ascribes  to  Abraham  Lincoln 
should  occur  in  the  thirty-seventh  cen 
tury;  and  if  so,  it  is  improbable  and 
incredible  that  it  occurred  in  the  nine 
teenth  century.  By  a  similar  POST 
S' 

*  Nineteenth  Century,  March,  1889,  p.  467. 


3«  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

late,  or  first  principle,  our  agnostic 
predecessors  in  the  nineteenth  century 
made  short  work  of  the  Gospels.  The 
writers  of  the  Gospels  reported  the 
"  miraculous."  And  as  miracles  since 
the  apostles  were  assumed  to  be 
improbable  and  incredible,  there  was 
no  good  reason  why  they  should  be 
thought  probable  and  credible  in  the 
apostles'  time. 

The  agnostic  controversialist  of  the 
nineteenth  century  did  not  assert,  in 
deed,  with  Hume,  as  an  a  priori  princi 
ple,  that  miracles  were  impossible,  or 
not,  theoretically,  susceptible  of  proof. 
On  the  contrary,  he  did  not  admit  any 
such  thing  as  an  a  priori  principle  at 
all. 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  33 

He  merely  said,  like  the  Dutch  jus 
tice  of  the  peace  :'  "  I  will  consider  the 
evidence,  and  in  four  days  I  will  de 
cide  the  case  in  favor  of  the  plaintiff." 

Possibly,  however,  my  opponent 
may  deny  my  first  principle,  and 
maintain  that  such  a  career  as  Lincoln's 
is  not  incredible,  and  that  it  might  be, 
or  even  that  it  has  been,  paralleled  in 
modern  times. 

Well,  there  were  those  in  the  nine 
teenth  century  who  denied  the  first 
principle  upon  which  our  agnostic  fore 
fathers  based  their  assault  upon  the 
Gospels.  These  people  denied  that 
miracles  were  incredible,  either  in  the 
time  of  the  apostles  or  since  their  time, 
and  affirmed,  on  the  contrary,  "  that 
V 


34  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

the  Supreme  Being  has  wrought 
miracles  on  earth  ever  since  the  time 
of  the  apostles,"  as  well  as  in  and  be 
fore  their  time. 

This  struck  at  the  root  of  the  entire 
argument  against  the  Gospel  narratives, 
and  it  would  be  necessary,  as  against 
people  who  thus  argued,  to  prove  that 
miracles  were  incredible  at  any  time. 
But  those  who  thus  objected  were  either 
Romanists  or  no  better  than  Roman 
ists,  and  of  course  it  would  have  been 
a  waste  of  time  for  a  scientist  or  an 
agnostic  to  attempt  to  reason  with 
people  of  that  class. 

If,  however,  my  opponent  requires 
me  to  demonstrate  my  first  principle,  to 
wit,  that  the  reported  career  of  Abra- 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.          35 

ham  Lincoln  is  "exceptional"  and  in 
credible,  viewed  in  the  light  of  the 
thirty-seventh  century,  I  will  proceed 
at  once  to  do  so. 

1.  It  remains  to  be  proved  that  there 
has  been  any  career  at  all  analogous  to 
that   ascribed   by    the    popular   tradition 
to    Abraham     Lincoln,    or    as    "  excep 
tional  "   as     his,     since    the     nineteenth 
century,     and    especially    in     our     own 
day. 

All  I  can  say  is  it  will  be  a  difficult 
job  to  satisfy  an  agnostic  on  this 
point.  Indeed,  any  proof  offered  may 
be  at  once  rejected  as  being  testimony 
to  the  "exceptional." 

2.  "  Hero    worship "   is    unknown    to 
modern  civilization. 


36  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  AfYTH. 

Individualism  is  looked  upon  as  the 
bane  of  equality  and  a  menace  to 
the  social  equilibrium.  Ever  since  the 
African  Renaissance  it  has  been  the 
business  of  the  state  to  educate  the 
people,  up  and  down,  to  a  common 
level. 

The  same  schools  for  all — the  same 
school  books,  the  same  code  of  morals 
and  manners  carefully  prescribed  by 
the  legislature,  the  same  rules  for  dress 
and  for  the  daily  routine  of  occupa 
tion,  including  the  same  physical 
exercises,  together  with  a  careful 
adjustment  of  marriages  under  state 
supervision,  and  a  careful  selection  of 
offspring  fit  to  survive  —  all  this  has 
secured  the  complete  equality  of  the 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  37 

people,  mentally,  morally,  and  physi 
cally.  ' 

It  is  true  that  a  great  thinker  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  John  Stuart  Mill, 
protested  against  this  grand  system  of 
governmental  education,  stigmatizing 
it  as  "  a  mere  contrivance  for  molding 
people  to  be  exactly  like  one  another."  * 

Precisely.  And  it  is  a  matter  of  con 
gratulation  that  Mill's  protest  was  un 
heeded.  The  very  thing  he  depre 
cated  was  the  thing  aimed  at,  /".  e., 
''molding  people  to  be  exactly  like  one 
another,"  and  the  elimination  of  "  in 
dividuality  of  character  and  diversity  in 
opinions  and  mode  of  conduct."  With 
such  success  has  the  leveling  process 

*Mill  on  "  Liberty,"  American  edition,  1863,  p.  205. 


3$  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

been  carried  out,  that  no  citizen  is  in 
any  respect  the  superior  or  the  in 
ferior  of  any  other  citizen.  Neither 
we  nor  our  fathers  have  ever  known 
any  other  state  of  things. 

"  Hero  worship,"  a  thing  impossible 
at  the  present  day,  is  known  to  us  only 
through  the  legends  of  former  ages. 

It  follows  from  all  this  that  the 
story  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  being  im 
probable  and  incredible  in  the  light  of 
the  present  day,  must  be  rejected  as  a 
myth  of  the  Dark  Ages.  Q.  E.  Z). 

As  the  immediate  occasion  for  this 
discussion  was  the  alleged  Emancipa 
tion  Proclamation,  it  is  proper  I  should 
give  especial  attention  to  the  question 
of  its  authenticity. 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.          39 

But  if  I  succeed  in  discrediting  that 
supposititious  document,  I  discredit  at 
.  the  same  time  the  entire  popular  tradi 
tion  of  which  it  is  a  component  part — for 
falsum  in  uno,  falsum  in  omnibus. 

I  submit,  then,  the  following  six 
reasons  for  doubting  the  historic  truth 
of  the  alleged  Emancipation  Proclama 
tion. 


I. 

The  first  reason  is  based  on  the 
present  state  of  the  oldest  record  evi 
dence.  It  will  not  be  claimed,  I  sup 
pose,  that  there  is  now  extant  any  book 
or  other  document  of  the  nineteenth 
century  purporting  to  be  a  narrative  of 

the    fact    in    question.      Every    presump- 

• 

tion  is  against  the  preservation  of  any 
such  document,  and  its  existence  cannot 
be  proved 

In  the  nineteenth  century  no  original 
manuscript  of  the  first  age  of  the 
Christian  era,  or  of  the  preceding  two 

centuries,  was  known  to  be  in  existence. 
40 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  4* 

The  oldest  manuscript  of  a  date  since 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era  was 
supposed  to  be  the  palimpsest  of  "  Cicero 
de  Republica"  of  the  second  century. 

The  oldest  copies  of  Terence  and  of 
Sallust  were  of  the  fourth  or  fifth  cen 
tury. 

The  celebrated  "  Medicean  Vergil "  was 
also  of  the  fourth  or  fifth  century. 

The  oldest  manuscript  of  the  New 
Testament,  the  "  Codex  Vaticanus,"  was, 
as  we  learn  from  the  article  on  "  Palae 
ography  "in  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britan- 
nica,"  of  the  fourth  century. 

There  was  in  these  cases  an  hiatus  of 
from  three  to  six  centuries  between  the 
writers  and  the  oldest  extant  copies  of 
their  writings. 


42  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

Now,  as  there  is  no  good  reason  why 
history  should  not  repeat  itself  in  this 
respect,  it  was  to  be  presumed  that  no 
copy  or  reprint  of  any  publication  of  the 
nineteenth  century  would  be  found  in 
this  the  thirty-seventh  century  older 
than  from  the  twenty-third  to  the  twenty- 
sixth  century. 

Indeed,  a  far  greater  hiatus  was  to  be 
expected  between  the  writers  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  the  oldest  copy 
of  their  writings,  in  the  thirty-seventh, 
than  between  writers  of  the  first  and  the 
oldest  copy  of  their  writings,  in  the  nine 
teenth  century.  For  before  the  dis 
covery  of  the  art  of  printing,  the  diffi 
culty  of  making  copies  caused  it  to  be 
a  matter  of  far  greater  importance  than 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  43 

afterward,  to  carefully  preserve  these 
copies.  More  durable  material  (parch 
ment)  was  used,  and  copies  were  kept 
with  the  greatest  care  in  monasteries, 
under  the  supervision  of  learned  com 
munities — the  Benedictines  and  others, 
who  devoted  especial  attention  to  the 
preservation  of  the  sacred  books,  a$  well 
as  of  the  great  masterpieces  of  Grecian 
and  Latin  history  and  poetry  and 
philosophy.  With  the  invention  of 
printing  the  ease  and  rapidity  with  which 
copies  could  be  reproduced,  and  the 
perishable  material  used  (paper),  ren 
dered  the  long  preservation  of  first  edi 
tions  a  matter  of  little  or  no  importance, 
and  practically  impossible. 

Deposits   in    public  libraries   were  no 


44  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

guarantee  of  long  preservation — /.  e., 
for  many  centuries,  The  libraries  of 
the  British  Museum  and  of  the  Ameri 
can  Congress  were  as  liable  to  destruc 
tion  by  fire  or  mob  as  was  the  Alexan 
drian  library,  the  largest  of  the  ancient 
world.  The  overthrow  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  history  tells  us,  involved  in  its 
fate  the  destruction  or  dispersion  of  all 
the  great  libraries  of  the  empire. 

But  the  canker  of  time  would  inevi 
tably  obliterate  printed  books,  even  if 
they  escaped  the  fury  of  fire  and  mob.* 

*  An  interesting  illustration  of  the  perishableness  of 
original  documents  is  the  fate  of  the  Declaration  of  In 
dependence  within  a  little  over  a  century  from  its  date. 
The  following  is  taken  from  the  New  York  Times  of 
February  13,  1894: 

"  WASHINGTON,  February  12. — To-day  the  original 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  45 

The  people  of  the  nineteenth  century 
feared  the  destruction  of  their  printed 
records,  and  sometimes  attempted  to 
avert  or  delay  this  fate  by  deposits  in 
corner-stones.  But  where  has  there 
been  found  amid  the  ruins  of  New 
York  or  Washington  or  London  any 

copy  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  withdrawn 
from  public  exhibition  in  the  State  Departmtnt  library, 
made  into  a  roll,  and  placed  in  a  tin  box  for  filing  with 
the  archives  of  the  Government.  The  rapid  fading  of 
the  text  of  the  declaration  and  the  deterioration  of  the 
parchment  on  which  it  is  engrossed,  from  exposure  to 
the  light  and  on  account  of  age,  rendered  it  impracticable 
for  the  department  to  allow  it  to  be  exhibited  or  handled 
longer.  In  lieu  of  the  original  document,  a  fac-simile 
will  be  placed  on 'exhibition. 

"  Some  years  ago  it  was  noticed  that  the  ink  on  the 
original  parchment  was  fading,  and  it  has  been  gradually 
growing  fainter.  Recently  chemists  were  called  on  to 
examine  it,  and  they  gave  the  opinion,  that  the  full  strength 


4$  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

• 

record  of  the  Emancipation  Proclama 
tion  which  it  can  be  demonstrated  dates 
back  to  the  nineteenth  century? 

What  conclusion  is  to  be  drawn  from 
all  this? 

Obviously,  that  in  the  hiatus  between 
the  original  records  of  the  nineteenth 
century  and  the  oldest  extant  copies  of 
them — an  hiatus  of,  from  three  to  six 
centuries,  at  least — the  opportunity  for 
fraud  and  mistake  was  so  great  as  to 

of  the  ink  could  be  brought  out  again  by  coating  it  with 
a  chemical  solution.  But  this  experiment  was  not  tried, 
owing  to  the  fear  that  the  precious  paper  might  be  in 
jured  in  some  way,  and  also  because  no  alteration  could 
be  made,  and  nothing  whatever  done  to  it,  without  the 
authority  of  an  act  of  Congress.  It  required  an  act  of 
Congress  to  bring  the  declaration  from  Philadelphia  to 
Washington." 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.          47 

render    these     copies     wholly     untrust 
worthy. 

It  was  in  view  of  a  similar  hiatus 
that  Professor  Huxley  declared  that,  in 
such  an  interval,  "  there  is  no  telling 
what  additions  and  alterations  and 
interpolations  may  have  been  made."* 

*  Huxley's  "  Essays,"  p.  265. 


II. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  the 
early  narratives  of  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation,  those  purporting  to  be 
contemporaneous  with  this  alleged  event, 
as  well  as  those  written  near  the  close  of 
the  nineteenth  century  and  the  following 
centuries,  are  all  based  on  the  same 
groundwork. 

And  of  "the  originator  or  originators 
of  this  groundwork "  we  know  "  abso 
lutely  nothing." 

This  proposition  is  susceptible  of  the 
clearest  and  most  convincing  proof. 
For  what  was  this  "  groundwork "  ? 

Beyond  all  controversy  it  was,  mainly, 
48 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN-  MYTH.  49 

the  newspaper  accounts  of  the  day ;  and 
these  newspaper  accounts,  it  will  not  be 
disputed,  were  anonymous. 

Even  the  alleged  contemporary 
writers  of  formal  history  do  not  pre 
tend  to  have  had  any  personal  knowl-_ 
edge  of  the  ^proclamation,  nor  even  to 
have  derived  their  information  from  eye 
witnesses.  They  undoubtedly  obtained 
their  information  from  this  original 
"  groundwork,"  and  based  their  histories 
on  these  anonymous  reports.  It  follows 
from  this  that  no  dependence  can  be 
placed  upon  a  "  superstructure "  built 
upon  a  "  groundwork  "  of  whose  origina 
tors  we  know  "  absolutely  nothing."  * 

*  Compare  Huxley  on  the  "  groundwork  "  of  the  Syn 
optic  Gospels,  "  Essays,"  p.  265. 


III. 

The  story  is  wholly  irreconcilable  with 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 
Modern  research  has  at  last  disentangled 
the  knotty  problem  of  the  organization 
of  the  Ancient  American  Republic,  It 
was  a  complicated  structure  of  States 
within  a  state  ;  of  powers  distributed 
between  a  general  government  and  State 
governments.  But  it  is  now  agreed  by 
all  scholars  that  the  United  States  were 
a  government  of  limited  powers,  specifi 
cally  defined  by  a  written  Constitution, 
and  that  all  powers  not  expressly  or  by 

necessary  implication  vested  in  the  gen- 
50 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.          51 

eral   government   were   reserved   to   the 
States  and   to   the  people. 

The  tenth  article  of  the  Constitution 
provides  as  follows  : 

"  The  powers  not  delegated  to  the 
United  States  by  the  Constitution,  nor 
prohibited  by  it  to  the  States,  are  re 
served  to  the  States  respectively,  or  to 
the  people." 

Fortunately  this  Constitution,  as 
might  have  been  expected,  has  come 
down  to  our  time  intact.  It  is,  probably, 
the  best  authenticated  document  of 
Ancient  American  literature.  Now, 
there  cannot  be  found  anywhere  in  the 
Constitution  any  authority  conferred  on 
the  President  to  abolish  slavery.  And 
as  he  could  not  obtain  such ,  authority 


52  THE  A  BRA  NAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

from  any  other  source,  it  is  clear  he  had 
no  power  to  issue  an  Emancipation 
Proclamation. 

The  President  had  taken,  as  was 
required  of  him,  an  oath  to  support  this 

Constitution.     He  is   believed    to    have 

% 

been,  above  all  things,  an  honest  man, 
and  it  is  inconceivable  that  he  violated 
his  oath. 

It  adds  greatly  to  the  force  of  this 
argument  that  Lincoln  himself,  less  than 
four  months  before  this  alleged  pro 
clamation  (of  January  i,  1863),  when 
urged  to  issue  an  edict  abolishing 
slavery,  replied  that  his  object  was  to 
save  the  Union  "under  the  Consti 
tution,"  showing  clearly  his  determina 
tion  not  to  violate  the  Constitution, 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.          53 

even  for  the  purpose  of  saving  the 
Union. 

We  learn  from  Greeley's  "  American 
Conflict,"  that  as  late  as  August  22, 
1862,  the  President  used  the  following 
language,  in  a  letter  written  to  Greeley 
himself : 

"  My  paramount  object  is  to  save  the 
Union,  and  not  either  to  save  or  destroy 
slavery." 

And  again  : 

"  As  to  the  policy  I  would  seem  to  be 
pursuing,  as  you  say,  I  have  not  meant 
to  leave  anyone  in  doubt.  I  would 
save  the  Union  ;  I  would  save  it  in  the 
shortest  way  under  the  Constitution" 
(vol.  ii.  p.  250).  The  italics  are  mine. 

A     deputation    of    Protestant   clergy- 


54  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

men  from  Chicago  visited  the  President, 
September  13,  1862,  to  urge  him  to 
issue  such  a  proclamation.  But  he 
argued  with  them  at  length  against 
such  a  proceeding,  saying,  among  other 
things,  that  such  a  proclamation  would 
be  as  idle  as  "  a  pope's  bull  against  the 
comet"  (Id.t  p.  251). 

There  is  not  a  scintilla  of  evidence 
presented  by  Greeley  to  show  that  any 
new  light  ever  dawned  upon  the  Presi 
dent's  mind. 

Now,  it  is  true  that  in  the  oldest 
C3py  we  have  of  Greeley's  book — which 
must  have  been  printed,  as  I  have 
already  shown,  several  centuries  after 
Greeley's  death — the  alleged  proclama 
tion  is  inserted  right  on  the  heels  of  the 


\ 

THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  55 

letter  from  which  I  have  just  quoted, 
and  of  his  interview  with  the  Chicago 
clergymen.  And  the  following  is  the 
only  explanation  that  is  given  for  its 
abrupt  appearance. 

After  speaking  of  the  President's 
reply  to  the  deputation,  which  is  men 
tioned  above,  the  narrative  is  made  to 
say : 

"  The  deputation  had  scarcely  re 
turned  to  Chicago,  and  reported  to 
their  constituents,  when  the  great  body 
of  the  President's  supporters  were  elec 
trified,  while  his  opponents  in  general 
were  only  still  further  alienated,  by  the 
unheralded  appearance  of  the  following 
proclamation,"  to  wit :  a  proclamation 
of  September  22,  1862,  announcing  his 

\     ' 


5$  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  AfYTH. 

intention  to  issue  the  final  Emancipa 
tion  Proclamation  on  the  first  day  of 
January,  1863  (Id.,  p.  252). 

Now,  what  sort  of  an  explanation  is 
this?  Will  it  satisfy  any  rational  His 
torical  Critic  ?  What  reason  does  it 
assign  for  this  "  unheralded  "  and  abrupt 
change  of  front  ?  None  whatever. 

Abraham  Lincoln  is  reputed  to  have 
been  a  man  of  remarkably  clear  and 
strong  convictions,  and  of  great  tenacity 
of  purpose.  But  to  credit  this  remark 
able  and  sudden  change,  is  it  not  to 
make  him  out  vacillating  and  "  infirm 
of  purpose"? 

This  is  incredible.  It  is  altogether 
more  probable  that  he  continued  to 
maintain  the  position  taken  by  him  as 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  57 

late  as  September  13,  1862,  and  that  the 
proclamations  appearing  in  our  copies 
of  Greeley's  book  are  interpolations  of 
a  later  age.  Everything  indicates  this. 
They  are  too  abrupt,  and  are  out  of 
place  in  the  narrative — put  of  harmony 
with  the  context 


IV. 

The  argument  just  presented  may  be 
characterized  as  an  a  priori  reason, 
based  upon  the  absence  of  constitutional 
authority,  and  the  improbability  that 
Lincoln  transcended  his  constitutional 
powers. 

The  Thirteenth  Amendment  of  the 
Constitution  supplements  this  with  an 
a  posteriori  reason  for  discrediting  the 
story.  By  this  amendment  slavery 
was  abolished.  The  amendment  was 
adopted  by  Congress,  and  ratified  by 
the  States,  in  the  year  1865. 

Now,    if    slavery     had    already    been 

abolished,  by  the   Emancipation    Procla- 

58 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  59 

mation,  on  the  ist  of  January,  1863, 
what  is  the  meaning  of  this  solemn  farce 
of  the  Thirteenth  Amendment  ? 

This  amendment  was  adopted  by  a 
Congress  composed  almost  entirely  of 
'the  devoted  political  and  personal  friends 
of  the  President.  And  yet  they  do  not 
so  much  as  allude  to  his  alleged  great 
"  Proclamation  of  Freedom,"  even  by 
way  of  preamble.  The  amendment  does 
not  purport  to  ratify  his  act,  but  to  be 
an  original  enactment. 

This  seems  very  strange. 

It  puts  the  advocates  of  the  proclama 
tion  in  this  dilemma:  They  must  either 
admit  that  the  Congress  of  1865  knew 
nothing  of  this  alleged  document,  or  con 
sidered  it  of  no  value.  But  it  may  be 


60  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  AfYTH. 

said  that  Lincoln's  proclamation  only 
freed  the  slaves  within  the  Confederate 
lines,  while  the  amendment  enfranchised 
them  everywhere  throughout  the  United 
States.  But  this  is  a  very  poor  quibble. 
Everyone  knows  that  all  but  a  very  small 
fraction  of  the  slaves  were  within  the 
Confederate  lines,  and  that  if  slaver}'' 
were  abolished  throughout  the  Con 
federacy,  it  could  not  su'rvive  a  single 
year  on  the  borders  of  the  free  States. 
So  that  if  it  had  been  abolished,  by  the 
proclamation,  in  the  Confederate  States 
in  1863,  it  would  have  ceased  to  exist 
anywhere  in  the  United  States  before 
1865,  and  there  would  have  been  no 
reason  for  the  Thirteenth  Amendment, 
and  nothing  for  it  to  operate  upon. 


V. 

I  come  now  to  an  argument  to 
which  I  attach  the  greatest  importance, 
and  which  anyone  familiar  with  agnos 
tic  dialectics  must  see  is  fatal  to  the 
claim  that  Abraham  Lincoln  promul 
gated  the  Emancipation  Proclamation. 

This  argument  may  be  termed  the 
argument  from  silence. 

It  will  be  conceded,  of  course,  that 
.  none  of  the  alleged '  comtemporary 
narratives  of  the  Civil  War  is  entitled 
to  greater  credit  for  authenticity,  com 
petency,  and  truthfulness  than  the 
"Personal  Memoirs  of  U.  S,  Grant." 

61 


62  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

He  was,  himself,  not  only  the  most 
conspicuous  chieftain  of  the  war,  but 
was  also  afterward  President  of  the 
Republic  for  two  consecutive  terms. 
His  personal  relations  with  Lincoln 
were  of  the  closest  nature.  The 
"Memoirs"  were  carefully  prepared 
by  him  toward  the  close  of  his  life, 
and  were  published  about  the  year 
1885,  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  century 
after  Lincoln's  death. 

They  were  looked  upon  by  the 
American  people  as  a  perfectly  trust 
worthy  narrative,  written  by  the  most 
competent  of  narrators. 

Now,  there  is  not  to  be  found  any 
where  in  the  two  good-sized  volumes 
of  these  Memoirs  so  much  as  a  single 


•  THE  ABRAHAM  LtNCOLtf  MYTtt.          t>$ 

mention  of  any  Emancipation  Proclama 
tion  !  What  is  to  be  thought  of  this  ? 
The  inference  is  inevitable,  that  Gen 
eral  Grant  had  never  heard  of  any 
such  document. 

It  is  idle  to  suggest  that  this  matter 
lay  outside  the  scope  of  Grant's  book. 
His  work  is  very  comprehensive  and 
complete.  It  deals  not  only  with  his 
own  campaigns,  but  with  those  of  Sher 
man  and  the  other  great  generals  of 
the  war.  It  deals  also  with  the  politi 
cal  history  of  the  war,  including,  of 
course,  the  slavery  question,,  which 
was  the  cause  of  the  war. 

Moreover,  emancipation,  had  it  taken 
place  as  alleged,  must  inevitably  have 
proved  an  extremely  important  factor, 


64  THE  ABRAHAHf  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

as  a  "war  measure,"  in  the  campaigns 
in  which  Grant  was  engaged  and  of 
which  he  was  writing. 

It  is  inconceivable  that  he  would 
make  no  allusion  to  this  great  culmi 
nating  act  in  the  "irrepressible  con 
flict,"  to  this  Magna  Charta  of  the 
African  race  in  the  United  States,  if 
any  such  proclamation  had  been  issued. 

The  significance  of  his  silence  can 
scarcely  be  overestimated. 

For  a  similar  reason  Professor  Huxley 
argued  that  the  "  Sermon  on  the  Mount" 
is  not  genuine,  because  Mark  does  not 
give  it — although  Matthew  and  Luke 
do.* 

If    "logic     is    logic,"    judgment    must 

*"  Essays,"  pp.  324-325. 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  65 

go  against  the    proclamation,    upon   the 
"  argument   from   silence." 

If,  now,  it  be  asked  why  I  insist  that 
Grant's  "  Memoirs"  are  the  most  authen 
tic  and  most  credible  of  all  the  contem 
poraneous  narratives  of  the  Civil  War, 
and  why  I  refuse  to  give  credence  to 
other  narratives  which  do  purport  to  give 
an  account  of  the  Emancipation  Procla 
mation,  it  is  a  sufficieat  answer  to  say 
that  Grant's  "  Memoirs"  conform  to  what 
I  conceive  to  be  the  truth  of  history 
respecting  the  matter  now  in  question, 
and  that  the  other  narratives  do  not  I 
give  the  preference  to  the  "  Memoirs" 
for  the  same  reason  that  Professor 
Huxley  appears  to  have  given  the  pref 
erence  to  St.  Mark's  Gospel.  It  best 


66          THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

conformed,  he  thought,  to  the  view  he 
was  advocating  of  the  Crucifixion,  and 
what  "  happened  after  the  Crucifixion."* 

In  its  brevity  of  narrative  it  omits 
some  statements  contained  in  the  other 
Gospels,  which  would,  if  accepted,  have 
made  it  impossible  for  him  to  stick  to 
his  theory. 

Indeed,  we  find  a  great  diversity 
among  the  advanced  critics  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  in  the  matter  of  prefer 
ence.  Some  of  them  preferred  Mat 
thew,  others  Luke,  and  others  again 
John. 

Renan  appears  to  have  varied  in  his 
preferences. 

My  readers  will  pardon  me,  I  trust, 
*  id.,  p.  328. 


THE  ABRAHAM  UNCOLX  MYTH.         67 

for  citing  here  Mrs.  Ward's  picturesque 
summary  of  the  results  of  German  criti 
cism  toward  the  close  of  the  nineteenth 
century  : 

"And  what  is  the  whole  history  of 
German  criticism  but  a  history  of 
brilliant  failures,  from  Strauss  down 
ward  ? 

"One  theorist  follows  another — now 
Mark  is  uppermost  as  the  Ur-Evangelist, 
now  Matthew ;  now  the  synoptics  are 
sacrificed  to  St.  John,  now  St.  John  to 
the  synoptics.  Baur  relegates  one  after 
another  of  the  epistles  to  the  second 
century  because  his  theory  cannot  do 
with  them  in  the  first. 

41  Harnack  tells  you  that  Baur's  theory 


68  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

is  all  wrong,  and  that  Thessalonians  and 
Philippians  must  go  back  again.  Volk- 
mar  sweeps  together  Gospels  and  Epis 
tles  in  a  heap  toward  the  middle  of  the 
second  century  as  the  earliest  date  for 
almost  all  of  them  ;  and  Dr.  Abbot,  who, 
as  we  are  told,  has  absorbed  all  the 
learning  of  all  the  Germans,  puts  Mark 
before  70  A.  D.,  Matthew  just  before  70 
A.  D.,  and  Luke  about  80  A.  D. 

"  Strauss'  mythical  theory  is  dead 
and  buried  by  common  consent.  Baur's 
tendency  theory  is  much  the  same ; 
Renan  will  have  none  of  the  Tobingen 
school ;  Volkmar  is  already  antiquated, 
and  Pfleiderer's  fancies  are  now  in  the 
order  of  the  day."* 

*  Ninttftnth  Century,  March,  1889.  p.  462. 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  69 

This  may  at  first  sight  suggest  an 
intellectual  Donnybrook  Fair.  But  to 
one  possessing  "  the  historical  temper  " 
there  is  discernible  in  the  midst  of  all 
this  apparent  confusion  the  constant 
struggle  for  conformity  to  theory.  This 
is  the  theme  which  brings  harmony  out 
of  what  otherwise  seems  hopeless  dis 
cord. 

In  the  first  place  the  theory  accredits 
the  record,  and  then  the  record  proves 
the  theory. 

Grant's  "  Memoirs"  conforming  to  my 
theory,  I  give  them  the  preference  over 
all  other  narratives.  And  his  "Me 
moirs"  bear  out  my  theory. 


VI. 

There  is  another  argument  suggested 
by  Grant's  "  Memoir's,"  or  perhaps  it 
would  be  more  accurate  to  say  another 
way  of  putting  the  same  argument— 
to  wit,  the  discrepancies  in  the  narra 
tives. 

This  was  a  fruitful  source  of  objec 
tion  to  the  Gospels  by  our  agnostic 
forefathers  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

Thus    Professor    Huxley,  in  objecting 
to  the  story  of  demoniacal  possession  in 
the    Gadarene   country,  or,    as   he   play 
fully    calls  it,    "  the    Gadarene    pig    af- 
70 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  7 1 

fair,"  dwells  on  the  fact  that  Mark  and 
Luke  mention  but  one  possessed  man, 
while  Matthew  mentions  two.*  Of 
course  the  inference  is  obvious — there 
was  no  such  "  affair."  Unfortunately  I 
do  not  have  at  hand  any  of  the  histories 
of  the  American  Civil  War  written 
subsequent  to  the  year  1894,  or  I 
would  be  able,  I  think,  to  make  out  a 
pretty  formidable  list  of  just  such  dis 
crepancies. 

But  the  one  I  have  just  been  con 
sidering,  between  Grant's  "  Memoirs," 
and  the  other  alleged  contemporary 
narratives,  for  instance,  Greeley's 
"  American  Conflict,"  is  sufficient  for 
the  purpose  of  the  argument. 

*  "Essays,"  p.  346, 


72  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

Attention  has  already  been  called  to 
the  fact  that  all  these  narratives,  so  far 
from  being  independent  authorities,  are 
all  based  on  one  original  "ground 
work."  The  "  groundwork "  has  dis 
appeared  in  the  lapse  of  time.  The 
strength  of  the  "  superstructure  " — i.  e., 
the  narratives  based  on  it — depends,  of 
course,  on  their  fidelity  to  or  conformity 
with  the  "  groundwork."  Now,  there 
is  no  way  by  which  this  conformity  can 
be  known  to  exist  excepting  by  the 
agreement  of  these  narratives  with 
each  other.  Here  we  have  the  key  by 
which  to  distinguish  the  original  story 
from  the  glosses  and  interpolations  of 
later  times. 

In  there  spects  in  which  they  all  agree 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  73 

we  may,  in  the  absence,  of  course,  of 
some  other  objection,  concede  that  they 
reproduce  the  original  story.  But  as  to* 
all  matters  in  which  they  disagree  with 
each  other,  all  the  narratives  are  to  be 
rejected.  For  how  are  we  to  account 
for  the  discrepancies?  And  which 
statement  is  to  be  received  as  true, 
and  which  rejected  as  false?  Truth 
is  always  consistent  with  itself ;  and 
when  two  witnesses  tell  different  stories 
one  of  them  must  be  untruthful  or 
mistaken. 

The  discrepancy,  then,  between  Grant 
and  Greeley  as  to  the  matter  now  in 
question — Greeley  purporting  to  give  the 
proclamation,  and  Grant  making  no  men 
tion  of  it — warrants  me  in  concluding 


74  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

that  the  story  of  the  proclamation  was  no 
part  of  the  original  "groundwork"  upon 
which  both  their  narratives  are  built,  and 
that  it  should  therefore  be  rejected  as 
spurious. 

It  is  singular  how  obtuse  the  Princi 
pal  of  the  Law  School,  and,  as  for 
that  matter,  lawyers  in  general  are, 
to  the  force  of  this  argument  from  dis 
crepancy. 

They  seem  to  make  nothing  of  discrep 
ancies  in  the  details  of  a  story,  and  to 
expect  them  even  from  witnesses  whom 
they  regard  as  honest,  unbiased,  and 
intelligent. 

The  ordinary  legal  view  is  thus 
stated  by  Starkie  in  his  "  Law  of  Evi 
dence  " : 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  75 

"  It  has  been  well  remarked  by  a  great 
observer,  that  'the  usual  character  of 
human  testimony  is  substantial  truth 
under  circumstantial  variety.'  It  so 
rarely  happens  that  witnesses  of  the  same 
transaction  perfectly  and  entirely  agree 
in  all  points  connected  with  it  that  an 
entire  and  complete  coincidence  in  every 
particular,  so  far  from  strengthening 
their  credit,  not  unfrequently  engenders 
a  suspicion  of  practice  and  concert  "  (vol. 
i.  p.  468). 

Having  occasion  to  visit  one  of  our 
courts  the  other  day,  I  chanced  to  find 
an  accident  case  on  trial. 

A  boy,  some  ten  years  old,  running 
across  the  street,  had  been  knocked  down 


76  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

and  killed  by  the  horses  drawing  some 
vehicle.  The  witnesses  of  the  occurrence, 
all  of  them,  apparently,  people  of  ordin 
ary  intelligence,  and  wholly  disinterested, 
differed  very  widely  in  many  of  the  cir 
cumstances.  One  of  them  said  the  boy 
was  running  from  the  north  to  the  south 
side  of  the  street.  Another  said  he  was 
running  from  the  south  to  the  north 
side.  One  SPW  onlv  on^  boy  running. 

J  JO 

Another  saw  two  boys,  one  chasing  the 
other. 

Now,  in  a  mind  properly  indoctrinated 
with  the  methods  of  agnostic  dialectics, 
these  discrepancies  would  raise  a  doubt 
as  to  whether  there  was  any  boy  running 
at  all — or  any  accident.  But,  strange 
to  say,  neither  lawyers,  judge,  nor  jury 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  77 

seemed   to   have  any   trouble   on   these 
points. 

It  is  fortunate  for  the  "higher  histori 
cal  criticism"  that  it  knows  nothing  of 
legal  rules  of  evidence. 


VII. 

What,  then,  is  the  real  explanation  of 
the  story  of  the  Emancipation  Proclama 
tion  ? 

The  earliest  theory  since  the  era  of 
higher  criticism  was  that  of  Dr.  Doka- 
mok,  to  wit :  that  the  story  was  purely 
allegorical,  having  as  its  substratum  of 
truth  the  triumph  of  liberty  in  its  "  irre 
pressible  conflict"  with  slavery.  But 
the  rising  Timbuctoo  school  considered 
that  Dokamok  had  e^one  too  far  in 

o 

his    destructive    criticism,    and    recoiled 
from   it. 

He  himself,  after  his  beard  had  grown, 

78 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  79 

practically  abandoned  this  theory  of  his 
nursery  days. 

The  theory  which  immediately  super 
seded  the  allegorical  was  that  of  the 
famous  Professor  Felapton.  He  was 
probably  the  "first  entomologist  of  his 
age.  His  great  work  on  the  "  Mos 
quito  "  is  a  marvel  of  patient  research. 
No  one  could  be  better  equipped,  then, 
for  historical  investigation.  He  un 
earthed  the  fact  that  in  the  American 
Republic  there  were  two  great  parties 
differing,  toto  ccelo,  in  their  interpretation 
of  the  Constitution,  to  wit :  the  strict 
constructionists  and  the  liberal  construc- 
tionists ;  and  that  after  the  close  of  the 
Civil  War,  which  turned  the  tide  toward 
liberalism,  the  advocates  of  liberal  con- 


8o  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

struction  pressed  their  advantage  with 
great  persistency  and  fertility  of  re 
source.  It  was  under  the  influence  of 
this  liberal  tendency  that  the  story  had 
its  origin  and  its  growth. 

Upon  the  slender  foundation  of  the 
few  historic  facts  conceded  at  the  out 
set  of  this  article,  there  was  gradually 
built  up,  under  the  influence  of  this  tend 
ency,  the  story  which  has  come  down  to 
our  times — as  the  tradition  of  an  actual 
occurrence. 

Nothing  could  be  more  effectively 
cited  as  a  precedent  to  extend  the  power 

of  the  chief  magistrate  beyond  the  letter 
t>  j 

of  the  Constitution,  when  it  became  im 
portant  to  invoke  the  extreme  exercise 
of  executive  power. 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  8l 

But  the  view  which  now  obtains 
nearly  universal  acceptance  among 
advanced  thinkers  is  the  latest  theory 
of  the  new  Timbuctoo  school — to  wit: 
that  the  alleged  proclamation  is  a 
forgery  of  the  twentieth  century. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  some  time  in 
the  course  of  the  twentieth  century,  in 
a  very  exciting  contest  for  the  .Pres 
idency,  one  of  the  candidates  bore  the 
name  of  Lincoln.  His  given  name  is 
not  certainly  known,  nor  is  it  entirely 
clear  whether  or  not  he  was  a  lineal 
descendant  of  Abraham  JJncoln,  nor 
even  whether  he  was  of  the  same  stock. 

It  is  probable,  however,  that  he  was 
a  lineal  descendant  of  the  great  Pres 
ident. 


82  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

The  American  people  had  come  to 
acquiesce,  more  or  less,  in  the  law 
of  heredity  in  the  matter  of  public 
office.  Thus  John  Adams  had  as  a 
successor  in  the  Presidency  his  son, 
and  William  Henry  Harrison,  his  grand 
son.  A  son  of  Abraham  Lincoln  was, 
as  early  as  1896,  a  prominent  candi 
date  for  the  Presidency,  and  had  al 
ready  been  sent  as  Minister  to  Eng 
land. 

In  the  twentieth  century  the  negro 
vote  had  become  the  most  powerful 
factor  in  elections.  It  held  the  balance 
of  power,  and  both  parties  were  com 
pelled  to  court  its  support.  Nothing 
was  more  natural  than  that  a  de 
scendant  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  whom 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.          83 

the   negroes,   out   of    that   tendency   to 
"  hero-worship  "  of  which  I  have  spoken,  - 
were   disposed    to    look    upon   as   their 

"  Moses,"     should     be     chosen     as     an 

• 

available  candidate  by  one  of  the  great 
political  parties.  And  to  add  to  the 
strength  of  the  appeal  to  this  vote 
the  "  Emancipation  Proclamation "  was 
devised,  and  ascribed  to  the  ancestor 
of  the  candidate. 

The  story  was  told  to  a  people  pre 
disposed  to  accept  it,  and  they  did 
accept  it  without  question.  It  accorded 
with  their  almost  idolatrous  veneration 
for  the  hero  of  the  Civil  War,  which 
had  led,  in  some  way,  to  the  enfran 
chisement  of  their  race. 

The    story     was    a     masterpiece    of 


84  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

political    strategy,    and   was    completely 
successful. 

The  descendant  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
was  triumphantly  elected  President  of 
the  United  States. 

History  informs  us  that  forgeries  of 
this  kind  were  not  uncommon  in  former 
ages. 

Thus,  in  the  Presidential  campaign 
of  1880  a  letter  appeared  in  the  public 
press,  a  few  weeks  before  the  election, 
purporting  to  have  been  written  by  the 
Republican  candidate,  General  Garfield, 
to  a  man  named  Morey,  expressing 
views  as  to  Chinese  immigration  which 
were  extremely  distasteful  to  the  people 
of  the  Pacific  States.  The  letter  was  a 
forgery  ;  but  it  was  so  successful  that, 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.          85 

before  it  was  exposed,  it  served  the 
purpose  of  turning  the  vote  of  Cali 
fornia  to  Garfield's  opponent. 

Again  there  was  in  England  the  case 
of  the  forged  letters  of  the  great  Irish 
patriot,  Charles  Stewart  Parnell,  which 
the  London  Times  bought  from  a  scoun 
drel  named  Pigott,  and  to  which  it  gave 
the  widest  publicity. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  speak  farther  of 
this  forgery,  for  my  readers  are,  of 
course,  familiar  with  it  through  the 
graphic  pages  of  Gaboon's  "  Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  British  Empire." 

The  famous  "  Forged  Decretals  "  may 
also  be  cited.  Originating  in  Spain,  in 
the  ninth  century,  they  were  only  finally 
shown  to  be  false  in  the  fifteenth.  The 


86  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH. 

reason  for  this  is  they  contained  noth 
ing  which  was  not  in  accord  with 
general  belief,  and  so  found  ready 
credence. 

All  this  goes  to  show  how  readily, 
with  the  favorable  conditions  existing  in 
the  twentieth  century,  the  Myth  of  the 
Emancipation  Proclamation  could  be 
invented,  and  palmed  off  as  genuine 
history  upon  popular  belief. 

It  is  hardly  necessary,  I  suppose,  to 
point  out  the  inference  to  be  drawn  from 
this  discussion.  The  value  of  the 
theories  just  stated  is  by  no  means  to 
be  measured  by  their  truth.  It  would 
not  impair  their  value  if  criticism  still 
higher  than  our  present  "  higher  criti 
cism  "  should,  in  the  future,  supersede 


THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  MYTH.  87 

them  all  by  some  theory  still  more 
"  imaginative." 

As  said  by  Huxley,  "he  would  be  a 
rash  man  who  should  assert  that  any 
solution  of  these  problems,  as  yet  formu 
lated,  is  exhaustive."  * 

The  problem  is  to  wipe  out  the  old 
tradition,  and  it  does  not  make  much 
matter  how  this  is  done.  The  fertility 
of  the  new  Timbuctoo  school  in  brilliant 
theories,  "  half  scientific,  half  imagina 
tive,"  leads  us  to  hope  that,  even  if  none 
of  those  thus  far  devised  will  "hold 
water,"  yet,  in  some  future  age,  one  may 
be  constructed  which  will  be  altogether 
acceptable. 

In  the  meantime,  and  until  the  dawn 

*  "  Essays,"  p.  322. 


88  THE  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  AfYTH. 

of  that  millennium,  and  until  all  the  pos 
sibilities  of  unheard  and  unheard  of 
theories  shall  have  been  exhausted,  the 
agnostic  is  entitled  to  insist  upon  a 
"  suspension  of  judgment." 


THE    END. 


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